If you didn’t make it to the “Google Tour” (I had previous commitments) I have provided some highlights: * Google launches a Personalized Homepage, a sort of ‘My Google’, that lets you plunk recent Gmail messages, Google News, newsfeeds from providers such as the New York Times, weather, and other bits of information onto Google’s […]

If you run a newsletter for your business, email delivery is probably your #1 headache. I want to cover the biggest issue right now – email delivery. Back in 1999, open rates for newsletters were 82%. Today, it is less than half of that at 38%. Even paid subscriptions aren’t opened at a rate above […]

Will having a .bok filetype screw up your SEO efforts? For example: http://www.bluewidgets.com/category-dir/product-page.bok This filetype is used by the ProStores and Kurant StoreSense e-commerce storefronts. These platforms are generally not too SEO friendly as they tend to be more “top heavy”. If you are worried about this extension not getting indexed by Google, don’t be. […]

Once again, Google’s ‘continuous update’ is just part of their imagination as the monthly PageRank update occurred yesterday. I have spent all night pouring over log files and analyzing the results. In past updates, there have been changes, and movement, however, I have not seen changes such as what I am seeing now in a […]

Summary of What is Content? by Scottie Claiborne. Commentary and Summary by Jerry West. Both search engines and customers love fresh, updated information. Some people groan at the thought of having to work so hard at adding new content, but it’s not as complicated as you think! FRESH INFORMATION 1. Weblogs or Blogs Blogs exploded […]

Just a reminder of some SEO basics: Use lowercase for all urls, including filenames and folder names Avoid the use of any special characters in your urls Include an HTML based sitemap that at least links to the important pages on your site (this includes your sales/informational pages) Be sure your robots.txt is formatted properly […]

Google Suggest Tool Recommendation After spending most of this morning testing this new tool, I would suggest that you aggressively attack this now with the understanding that this WILL hit the market, even though there is a chance it may not. Here are my recommendations, and you will benefit from doing this even if the […]

Google Revenue Released Amazingly, Google is earning, on average, 9 cents for every search query made on their system. Their revenue model and exposure through Google AdSense it driving up their revenue. Here are some facts that have just been released: * 98% of Google’s revenue comes from paid search * Average PPC is 54 […]

Here is the summary of Day Two from the Webmaster World Conference. Note: not every discussion is summarized, only those that will impact your business. The majority of feedback received was the discussions were all kept at very high level and not very many “gold nuggets” were revealed. Proactive Linking: When engaging in a new […]

Advice: Stock Options This morning, the Wall Street Journal had an article showing the paths two former Google contractors took and where they are now based on the decision they made five years ago. Both contractors were offered stock options instead of a cash payment for the services they performed. Both performed similar duties, with […]

Online Buying Habits I ran across a great article that was posted about two weeks ago (August 5th) about online buying habits. It seems that more and more people (114 million) are conducting online research before purchasing a product. This is vital, as the main avenue of conducting online research is via the major search […]

MSN Search Update Unofficially, Microsoft has written down “December 1, 2004” as the official launch for their new MSN Search. Their “drop dead” date of June 1st was greatly missed. They do have some “wiggle room” however, as their first major sponsorship isn’t until December 13th at the Search Engine Strategies in Chicago. I love […]

Search Engine Market Share The latest numbers have been released by qSearch and they are as follows: Google: 36.8% Yahoo!: 26.6% MSN: 14.5% AOL: 12.8% Excite: 4.3% Ask Jeeves: 1.8% InfoSpace: 1.3% Lycos: 0.8% Others: 1.1% The biggest surprise is the comeback by Excite. For an engine that is dead and is displaying Overture only […]

Yahoo! Launches Spyware Removal Option in Toolbar The new beta version of the toolbar from Yahoo! now has an option to check for and remove spyware components on your drive. In the tests we have run on it, it is much faster than LavaSoft’s AdAware, however, it is not as complete and misses a lot […]

There has been a lot of speculation made since Yahoo! dropped Google last week as the primary search result provider. What will become of the Direct Feed of Inktomi? The Trusted Feed program? We have the answers. However, I must ask you to please not share this information with anyone. This information was shared with […]

In less than two weeks since their last update, Google updated their data centers early this week. They then did a complete deep crawl on the 12th and then again on the 13th. In the last update, Google gave more relevancy to internal linked pages. While this is still true, the average site we track […]

It has nearly been a week since Yahoo! dumped Google in favor of Inktomi. The following is a current update on the market and also your site’s standing in both Yahoo! and Google in terms of link popularity. Meta Keyword Tag Back Even though Inktomi has always indexed the Meta Keyword tag, we have advised […]

As I reported two days ago, Google was in the process of updating their backlinks and PageRank information. The new update has been code-named: Brandy. The update is occurring now and should be completed during the weekend. As soon as it is complete, we will send to you how your site fared in the update. […]

Google is in the process of updating their datacenters. This should occur over the next day or two. From initial reports, it looks as if Google is doing another major “house cleaning” in terms of recognizable incoming links. If you notice your traffic fluxuating over the next two days, it is probably due to this […]

We know that Google changes drastically in the Florida Update in November and many sites are still feeling the effects. We will review the major changes in Google algorithm, which went under another minor change just a few days ago, and discuss what your long-term strategy should be. Word Stemming This represents a major shift […]